testing Murch’s “worldizing” delay

As part of this week’s Disquiet Junto, I volunteered to test out Murch’s technique of creating a quadrupled delay from a smaller space as described in this video:

Here’s how I approached the idea:

Using Ableton:

1. Inserted audio clip into Ableton at a chosen tempo. My example was a voiceover reading so I just used the default bpm = 120.
2. Quadrupled the session tempo.
3. Record clip to an external recorder. (I used a Zoom, and handheld micro cassette recorder.)
4. Import newly recorded speedy version into session.
5. sync tracks.
6. Drop the session tempo back to its original tempo (ie. bpm = 120)

I found deleting all of Ableton’s warp/transient markers, except the first one at the beginning of the clip, and using Complex mode gave me the best results.

Here are clips from my test. The reading is from John Cage’s Song Books, Vol. 1, Solo for Voice no. 4.

Much Fourth Worldizing Test

I found this technique to be part of Murch’s bigger process and creative approach of making the sounds you use ambiguous that I made the prime focus of my sound class this past semester. Things are necessarily as they seem. What you hear may not be its original source. See the quote in this post for further details: creating sound art